


An owl called my name

by Arctic_Cyclist



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Batman and Robin (Comics), Grayson (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Robin War, robin: son of batman
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Gen, Growing up and apart, Jealousy, Thai Food, day late and a dollar short, dickdami, dickdamiweek2016, mix of new52 and preboot, not smut, touch of angst, touch of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-06
Updated: 2016-09-06
Packaged: 2018-08-13 08:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7969450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arctic_Cyclist/pseuds/Arctic_Cyclist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Dickdamiweek2016: Dick realizes that all children grow up and all birds fledge. Even his.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An owl called my name

**Author's Note:**

> This completely disregards both of the Eternal series because they were terrible, and worse, they were boring. This is set in the current rebirth storyline.

It is entirely too sunny of a day for him to feel this way. Halfway around the globe from Gotham, Nightwing listens to the chatter on his comm while he observes Damian and his friends. 

"See? What did I tell you? Mimes are the natural enemy of ninjas," Batgirl crows. Black Bat grunts, and what he assumes are the aforementioned mimes whimper the end of the fight.

Oracle sighs. "Correlation does not always mean it's true. Besides, that book was fiction."

"That's what they want us to believe. It's more realistic than most of the the stuff we encounter."

"Truth." Cassandra says, and then, "Tag. You're it. Loser buys."

Dick smiles at the antics of Team Batgirls and swirls chopsticks in his noodles. Below, and far enough away that they aren't likely to detect him, three colorfully clad, heavily armored, assassin trained children and a giant bat thing ("Don't call him a man bat. He is not a man bat.") are grazing their way through the street food stands.

His Robin appears to be willing to eat fish, dairy, eggs, and to Dick's surprise, insects. Not just Dick's surprise either; going by Damian's expression, he wasn't expecting to enjoy the Thai staples as much as he is. Neither was Maya. Suren seems pleased that he has managed to find something in this strange world he was never meant to live in he can introduce his friends to.

If asked, and when asked, he says that this is what he wants, and has always wanted for Damian. That he wants his angry, wary, surly little brother to have friends that see the good in him and love him as much as he does. He swears that he wants to see Damian lean against Maya the way he and Donna used to lean together, to joke with Suren like he and Wally did. That Damian needed, and needs people in his life he trusts and loves unconditionally. Even if they aren't him. Friends with a shared history being formed for the future. 

As they tussle, not spar, tussle, he tells himself he isn't jealous. That his stomach doesn't twist and ache from the way Damian smiles at people with the look that used to belong to Dick alone. That he doesn't hate the girl, the boy, whose lives are molding around Damian the way Damian once molded around him and he molded around Bruce. Kids need to be kids, and he can't begrudge them that as they toss fried crickets in the air to catch on their tongues or be swiped by Goliath. 

Just because he claimed and protected him when no one else would, called him by his mother's term of endearment, is selling his body and maybe soul for him, that doesn't make the boy his and his alone. Even though Damian has died for him, offered to sell his soul for him, would sell his body for him if it came to that. Even if, for those few terrible minutes he was dead, it was Damian's voice that comforted him.

"It's alright, Grayson, you'll be safe. It's okay."

Until Bruce went to hell and brought him back, Dick would wake with tears in his eyes and a mouth tasting of pomegranate and dust, Damian's name on his lips. When Bruce asked, Damian said he remembered nothing, only his father screaming his name. 

It's not that he begrudges Bruce that. Given that the line between father and brother has always been blurry for them, and Damian's desperate desire for Bruce's love and attention, Dick can understand the child's confusion. 

His crispy noodles, a more conservative choice than the children's, despite the local vegetables and sweet, spicy sauce loaded with the tiny purple-black chilies from the bush on the deck that make his eyes water, are gone. The green tea, clouded with sweet tinned milk is a life saver, coating his throat and mouth in cool moisture and erasing the pain.

His temporary masters will be calling soon with another unsavory task or to reprimand him for his latest failure. The shipment was intercepted and released by the unholy quartet he's watching. Worse, in the eyes of the Parliament, they were given connections to jobs, places to stay, food, clothing, and hope. None of the hundreds that he was to ensure would end up slaves to a new order, who almost ended up in a even worse fate, will be easy to ensnare again. Not with a Demon, a Dragon, a Nobody, and a Goliath watching over them. 

They've become a real pain to many organizations in a way that no other group of Teen Titans has. They rescue the rejects, the lost, the hopeless, the disenfranchised, and the poor. They move constantly, tied to no one and no thing; free range children, child soldiers who have vowed not to kill and therefore inspire others. Batman is a legend, a story of a rich man, a white man and his world. Robin has somehow become a separate story, one that is becoming more and more co-opted every day. 

Batman Inc may have failed. The Robin movement is growing with every stop Damian makes, every life he saves even if it was never his intention. Especially because it isn't his intention.

It makes Dick laugh, because it means he's won. 

Won against Ra's and Talia, the Joker, the Court and the Parliament, even Bruce and Batman. Dick has won against everyone and everything that ever said that Robin is not a hero and inspiration in its own right, just a sidekick. It's more. Damian, as Tim once feared he would, has changed Robin irreversibly into something else. Something greater, brighter, and more pure than anyone envisioned. 

Dick's not jealous. He's not. He's proud of his little bird even as he worries about what he'll do when the Owls decide that he's too much of a problem. When they decide to attempt termination or worse, recover their alternative gray son. 

He might have to call in the big guns. Talia and Ra's were furious about Damian being Robin, both considered it degrading. They will not be happy that Damian almost became a Talon, even less so when they find out the Owls preferred Dick over Damian. 

It won't be pretty. 

Damian is aloft. He is watching his baby fly away.

If there are tears, it is from the chilies. If he is jealous, it is because he has never gotten to fly on Goliath. Not because his Little D is laughing for someone else, in love with others. Others who can love him back freely and as equals despite, or maybe because of his past. Others who are not him.

**Author's Note:**

> The book Steph is talking about is "The Gone Away World" by Nick Harkaway. The title is a reference to both their deaths, the book "I Heard An Owl Call My Name", the Court of Owls, and of course the current storylines.
> 
> As much as I enjoy all the smut, I love and miss the father/son, brother promoted to parent relationship between Dick and Damian. The best relationships in my life, and I suspect most people's, are the ones without sex but are still filled with affection, sacrifice, and devotion. The parent/child, siblings, and lifelong best friends relationships. I tend to think Dick and Damian, more than any other members of the Bats, fall into that category.
> 
> That said, jealousy is the perfect prompt because no relationship is more fraught with jealousy then the parent/child relationship. Anyone who has ever spent time around small children or had their own knows that they are incredibly jealous little creatures. Worse, though, are parents or parental figures when they realize that they are no longer central to the child's life.


End file.
